Along a track that snaked through the gorse, he pushed his way, flies buzzing about him. A shining gossamer lay across his path, bosom-high. From it a web swung in the wind. At the centre, where the threads met, a black and yellow spider, marked like a man of war, waited its prey. The lad brushed through it with a pang. The spider's work fell about him in ruins: he rushed for the gorse, and hung there topsy-turvy, as though heart-broken. Hard lines certainly! He had upset the spider's apple-cart, as the Almighty had upset his. But he had _had_ to-- and so no doubt had the Almighty. He turned as he ran. "Cheer up, old chap!" he hollaed back to his friend, crouching among the ruins of his home. "It'll all come out in the washing." III Fluffy thistle-heads, reminding him of Gwen's young chickens, stood up out of the gorse all about him. The bunched blackberries were ripening now: he almost expected to see Gwen's face, purple-mouthed, peering at him from a bramble. All about him the silver-downed gorse-pods were snapping like pistols. A stone-chat with ruddy breast spurted out of the gorse, and flirted upwards. The path broadened; the gorse grew scantier. His feet crushed sweetness out of the thyme. Here and there a young ash thrust up feathery. Of a sudden he found himself again at the top of one of those almost sheer descents to which he was becoming used. At its foot grew a hanger of beeches, already bronzing to autumn. Down he went, slithering on hands and tail, picked himself up towards the bottom, and ran away into the shade of the wood to find himself among silver-grey beech-stems. How refreshing it was after the glare, how rich, how dark! Till he was out of it, he had not known how hot it had been on the bare hill-side. Now he was aware of the sweat on his forehead, and a dripping shirt. Beech-stems rose in stately columns all about him. The floor was red and brown mosaic, the roof a tracery of leaves intertwined with light. Eastward the sun flashed as through a window. Close by a wood-pigeon was praying. Out of the aisle once again into the glare. Now the Downs lay behind him, barren and dun. On his left-front the rounded bosom of another beech-wood rose, in its midst a single chestnut already rusting. Across the valley, behind a ridge, a blunt church-tower and yellow-lichened roofs peeped. On the hill beyond, a windmill cocked up against the sky. He paid little attention, making straight for the flag of his country. The cottage stood about a quarter of a mile away, conspicuously solitary in the greensward, the Union Jack brave above it. The boy approached, wary but swift. Out here on the open plain there was no cover. He was exposed as a fly on a sheet of paper. Still things couldn't be worse--he comforted himself with that most comfortable of thoughts. Some two hundred yards from the cottage a ruined wall ran across the greensward. Behind it the boy took cover and spied.